Building Your Brand with Blogger Outreach

If you’re trying to establish your brand online and you haven’t heard about blogger outreach, then you’re in for quite a surprise.

People talk about blogger outreach, but what is it all about? Is it just about messaging your co-bloggers for networking opportunities or something more?

Well, the definitive answer is that blogger outreach is a lot more than just networking.

Since Google has got significantly smarter after the Penguin updates, the days of a gray hat and black hat SEO techniques seem to have come to an end.

Now, it appears that the only way you can establish yourself as an authority in your niche is by getting quality backlinks from popular bloggers.

Not just any popular blogger, but bloggers who are in the same niche as you are. So how do you harness the power of this useful technique and make your brand go viral?

Here are the basic steps to carrying out a blogger outreach campaign.

The Correct Way to Do Blogger Outreach

The entire process of reaching out to your fellow bloggers can be divided into five phases:

1. Planning

You should have a well-researched campaign ready before reaching out to bloggers in your niche. Envisioning your end objective before making a pitch is crucial in order to steer the campaign in the right direction.

2. Identifying

All your efforts may lead to nothing if you have no idea about the influencers in your niche. To do this step right, use blogger outreach tools like BuzzStream and BuzzSumo to identify the right bloggers or get recommendations from bloggers you already know in your network. Search based on niche and blogrolls also works well.

3. Pitching

Don’t just reach out to bloggers; reach out to them in a personalized manner and put a convincing pitch on why they should link to you. Mention explicitly what you offer, what you want in return, and what they should expect from you.

4. Sending

Now is the time to bedazzle the bloggers with your writing ability. Send over an amazing piece of content with relevant images and videos, infographics, or even exclusive interviews. Ask for a backlink when they’re impressed and continue improving your relationship with them.

5. Promoting

Once the content has been posted, it’s time to share it on social media sites. Ask the bloggers to share it on their social media profiles and you can also share it on your own for maximum exposure.

Patience Is Virtue

We’re not going to mince words here; establishing a relationship, be it any relationship (online and offline) is not easy. You have to be dedicated in your efforts and pursue it persistently before hoping to see results.

Blogger outreach is not a one-day deal because you constantly have to try and network with a wider audience to build up your brand reputation.

People won’t just agree to feature a guest post on their blog unless you provide them with something valuable. And creating value takes time and resources.

Even after providing value, you may not hear from many bloggers because either they are not interested or they just don’t care about providing someone else with leverage.

Some bloggers might also ask you for money in exchange for a guest post, but it is something you should be cautious when indulging in because Google sees it as a violation of their terms.

So, for a novice, blogger outreach can be a waste of a lot of time and money due to slim chances of success, but once you’ve done some testing and figure out what bloggers respond to it can be a very powerful and fast way to build your brand.

Are There Better Ways to Build Your Brand?

There are many alternative ways to spread the word about your brand online. However, I’ve found blogger outreach to be one of the best ways to build your brand on a shoestring budget, which is exactly what this blog is all about.

Little money is needed to get started, it’s largely about investing time over marketing dollars. Instead of buying paid traffic you are leveraging the traffic of authority bloggers by offering them quality content which you have invested your time in writing.

Outsourcing Blogger Outreach

If you don’t have the time to manage a blogger outreach campaign yourself, there is another option. To make the most out of this fantastic promotional strategy, consider hiring a professional blogger outreach agency like Linkredible.

Unlike other so-called outreach “professionals”, they actually do have a real, manual blogger outreach service which will keep you in Google’s good books.

I’ve tested a few different blogger outreach services on various websites of mine and most of them have a fake the outreach process and place your link in their own private blog network.

This will leave a huge footprint for Google to follow and likely penalize your site. After testing various services, I found Linkredible get only legit links from real authority websites.

Using a quality agency is the best way to build relationships if you’re short on time or want to skip all the hassle involved in the outreach and relationship building process. It’s a great hack for building your brand fast.

Closing Thoughts

Blogger outreach is undoubtedly the most powerful SEO technique for getting backlinks, as well as building traffic to your website and exposure for your brand and it will continue to be so in 2018 and beyond.

So you better put on your ‘white hat’ and get to learn this valuable marketing strategy or outsource it to a reliable blogger outreach service provider.